"Basement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Street backed up against the 32d Street shaft site, and the basement was used as a storeroom for supplies ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason
... this town are. They're watching this house for a desperado who assaulted some one outside. I met a sergeant on our steps. Says he doesn't think the man's here, but there's just a chance he slipped into the basement. It's absurd." ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... So far in the river, With many a light From window and casement, From garret to basement, She stood, with amazement, Houseless ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... MacLachan, the tailor, having started one of his disastrous drunks within the precincts of his Home of Fashion, was on his way to finish it in the gutter via the zigzag route from corner saloon to corner saloon, when the Twelve Apostles clock in the basement window lifted up its voice and (presumably through the influence of Peter) thrice denied the hour, which was actually a quarter before midnight. "Losh!" said MacLachan, who invariably reacted in tongue to the stimulus of Scotch whiskey, "they'll a' be closed. Hame an' to bed ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of them once—a very good little "Manchester Donkey Pump," but as noisy as they make 'em—and it became a question whether she should be discarded for an injector; she was bolted to a wall in the basement of a block of offices and could be heard throughout the building, and my employer told me that he would willingly give a 5l. note to anyone who would stop the noise. The donkey was vertical; I took off both valve covers and drilled a 3/8-inch hole in each projection from the cover ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... house was finished and was beautiful within and without. It was of two and a half stories, broad and with many rooms. Two spacious halls crossed each other, and there were wide verandas front and back, and a finished and latticed basement. The basement and the entire grounds, except a few bright flower-borders, were flagged, as was also the sidewalk, with the manufactured stone which in that nearly frostless climate makes such a perfect and beautiful pavement, and on this ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... one-fourth more than the usual weight.[43] John, therefore, calculating how he might reduce the amount of firewood used and have less to pay to the bakers in wages, and also how he might not lose in the weight of the bread, brought the still uncooked dough to the public baths of Achilles, in the basement of which the fire is kept burning, and bade his men set it down there. And when it seemed to be cooked in some fashion or other, he threw it into bags, put it on the ships, and sent it off. And when the fleet arrived ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... filling the air with a damp coolness. No one was visible and, leaving his hat and coat on a chair in an airy hall furnished in black wicker and flowery chintz hangings on buff walls, he descended to the basement dressing rooms. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... many pigs, seldom having less than 50 breeding sows. My pigs are mostly sold at from two to four months old, but we probably average 150 head the year round. A good deal of my manure, therefore, comes from the pig-pens, and from two basement cellars, where my store ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... wept—for oh! I don't know how long—not since—. Then you played on the organ some variations on a tune—'The Sweet By-and-by'—and the tears started, and I seemed but a leaf in a wild storm. That was the song my little boy used to sing! There was a Sunday-school in the basement of a church next to our house, and he would stand at the window, and listen till he caught the tune, and learned the words. Oh, that hymn! Every note stung me like a whip lash when I heard it again. My child's face as I saw him the last time I put him to bed; when he opened his drowsy eyes, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... ladder was being vainly raised at the rear. Suddenly a shout rang out. In the basement a window was unexpectedly knocked out from ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... announcing that they were still to let. Sandy saw the agent's name on the board, and went off straight to consult with him. The result of this consultation was that in half an hour he and the agent were all over the new house. Sandy went down to the basement, and thought himself particularly knowing in poking his nose into corners, in examining the construction of the kitchen-range, and expecting a copper for washing purposes to be put up in the scullery. Upstairs he selected ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... taste and munificence of Mr. Brennan, for the splendor and profusion of the supper and refreshments, which appeared as if "earth and sky and sea" had been plundered of their sweets. The company must have numbered from four to five hundred persons who were distributed in the various rooms of the basement story where dancing parties were kept up till two o'clock. Like the Brussells Ball, we too had gathered from ...
— A Pioneer Railway of the West • Maude Ward Lafferty
... a young girl came out of the basement of the house with a pitcher in her hand. She was evidently a servant girl. A milkman drove up, and from him she ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... was brought to Mrs. Black, as she was engaged in gathering up the fragments of the boarders' dinner in the basement. The card, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... from the river the pedestrian may walk half a mile at midday without meeting a single soul in the streets. A dead silence reigns over these deserted quarters, as if the prevailing lethargy had fallen upon the few inhabitants that remain. Grass grows on the sidewalks, and the basement walls of the houses are covered with moss. A dank, chilly mildew seems to hang in the air. One might become green all over, like a neglected tomb-stone, should he forget himself and stand too long in one spot. I spent a considerable portion ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... it?" cried Trina. "You might have asked ME something about it. Now, what have you done? I was talking with Mrs. Ryer about that house while I was out this morning, and she said the Hungarians moved out because it was absolutely unhealthy; there's water been standing in the basement for months. And she told me, too," Trina went on indignantly, "that she knew the owner, and she was sure we could get the house for thirty if we'd bargain for it. Now what have you gone and done? I hadn't made up my mind about taking the house at all. And now I WON'T take ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... perpetually young. There is so much going on that they do not have time to grow old," she told herself with a grim little smile, and went resolutely about the business of becoming acquainted with people. Every Thursday evening when the store had closed she went to a prayer meeting in the basement of the church and on Sunday evening attended a meeting of an organization called The ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... afterwards the party was joined by two priests and the governor's wife, a very pretty Creole, about twenty years of age. We were regaled with wine and chocolate, and parted late in the evening, on very friendly terms. The governor's house is a miserable abode: it has but one story, and the basement is a barrack for the soldiers. The upper part, inhabited by the governor, was very scantily furnished: a few old chairs, a couple of tables, and the walls whitewashed and decorated with prints of the Virgin Mary and his ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... so," answered the lad; "but I must not stay to speak any more, for the mistress waits for this balm to make tea for the cook Jean, who is like to have a fever;" and the lad disappeared under the low archway of the basement. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... beautiful carved woodwork, the painted heads of kings and bishops, and some great mullioned windows. Over the buttery is the audit-room, hung with ancient and rare tapestries, and containing a large chest known as Wykeham's money box. The original schoolroom was in the basement, and has long been put to other uses. The chantry, the beautiful cloisters, and the chapel tower were all built after the founder's death, but he provided a wooden bell tower, which stood away from the chapel, so that the main building should not ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... of my neighbor's, and found Calico in the basement curled up asleep with her babies. She roused and purred questioningly as we bent over the basket, and watched with concern, but with no anxiety, as two of her seven were lifted out and put inside a hat upon a table. She was perfectly used to having her kittens handled. ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... last they were all three finished. Wooden balconies and overhanging eaves had been added to them, so that, in the language of the advertisement, there were vacant three eligible Swiss-built villas, with sixteen rooms, no basement, electric bells, hot and cold water, and every modern convenience, including a common tennis lawn, to be let at L100 a year, or L1,500 purchase. So tempting an offer did not long remain open. Within a few ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The basement front of No. 12 Rue St Antoine, a narrow street in Rouen, leading from the Place de la Pucelle, was opened by Madame de la Tour, in the millinery business, in 1817, and tastefully arranged, so far as scant materials permitted ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... time ago, were playing games in a church basement, and the time began to lag just a little. A young man, who happened to be present, was appealed to for a new game, and he taught them to "skin the snake." It "caught on" immediately, and the group of boys grew hilarious in their enjoyment. After ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... Lawrence was one of the politicals under George Clerk. When the news of this affair came to him I was present. It was in a white marble loggia in the palace, where was a white marble chair or throne on a basement. Lawrence was sitting on this throne in great excitement. He wore an Afghan choga, a sort of dressing-gown garment, and this, and his thin locks, and thin beard were streaming in the wind. He always dwells in my ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... magistrate's business to attend to. But however late he was detained my grandmother always sat up for him, generally in a little sitting-room she had on the storey above the long drawing-room I have described to you, almost, that is to say, at the top of the house, from attic to basement of which ran the lung 'twisty-turny, corkscrew staircase.' One evening, about Christmas time it was, I think, my grandfather was very late of coming home. My grandmother was not uneasy, for he had told her he would be late, and she had mentioned ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... soil into which a great deal of history had been trodden. Balzac was genuinely as well as affectedly monarchical, and he was saturated with a sense of the past. Number 39 Rue Royale—of which the basement, like all the basements in the Rue Royale, is occupied by a shop—is not shown to the public; and I know not whether tradition designates the chamber in which the author of "Le Lys dans la Vallee" opened his ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... his coat. For stationery he used blank backs of letters and envelopes which he carefully and systematically saved and put away. His house at Nineteenth street, corner of Broadway, was a curiosity shop. In the basement he had a forge, and there were tools of all kinds over which he labored, while upstairs he had a law library of 10,000 volumes, for it was a fixed, cynical determination of his never to pay a lawyer for advice that he could himself get ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... necessity his chosen confidants. It is no less strange than true, however, that the little weaknesses which he had incurred, most probably during his military career, seemed to increase as his comforts diminished. He was actually a sort of journeyman Giovanni of the basement story. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... blueprints, numerous notebooks, some money and other valuables, and a small vial of solution—but of the larger bottle there was no trace. He then ransacked the entire house, from cellar to attic, with no better success. So cleverly was the entrance to the vault concealed in the basement wall that he failed to ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... Jacobs, appearing in the doorway, "there's a vagrant at the basement door. Three times hi've sent 'er away, han' three times she 'as returned, hevery time hasking for Miss Florimel, han' sayin' she must ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... fire it was found to be only smouldering in the basement of the house, and the men of another engine were swarming through the place searching for the seat of it. I went in with our men, and the first thing I saw was a coffin lying ready for use! The foreman led me down into a vaulted ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... really sleep at night. The elevator man dozes in his cage, and the night watchman may nap in the engineer's room in the basement. But the night nurses are always making their sleepless rounds, and in the wards, dark and quiet, restless ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... basement is often the best place on the farm for storing vegetables, says R. S. Gardner, of the University of Missouri, College of Agriculture. It must be properly built, and the temperature, moisture, and ventilation conditions kept right if the best results are to ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... of the great god of the heathen was sealed, but in the wide precincts of the Serapeum no one thought of surrender or of prompt defeat. The basement of the building, on which stood the grandest temple ever erected by the Hellenes, presented a smooth and slightly scarped rampart of impregnable strength to the foe. A sloping way extended up over a handsomely-decorated incline, and from the middle of the grand curve ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... We crept through a broken hedge, groped our way up the path, and planted ourselves on a flower-plot under the drawing-room window. The light came from thence; they had not put up the shutters, and the curtains were only half closed. Both of us were able to look in by standing on the basement, and clinging to the ledge, and we saw—ah! it was beautiful—a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers. ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... are softly yellowed with age, an exquisitely wrought iron balcony stretches across the front above the high ceilinged basement and great carved walnut doors open into a wide vestibule with a marble floor exactly like a bit of a gigantic chessboard. The transformation had so astounded me that I was almost afraid to touch the neatly polished beaten silver bell for fear ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... and not at the back; but one must take these things as one finds them. The entrance by which the Capitol is approached is such as I have described. There are mean little brick chimneys at the left hand as one walks in, attached to modern bakeries, which have been constructed in the basement for the use of the soldiers; and there is on the other hand the road by which wagons find their way to the underground region with fuel, stationery, and other matters desired by Senators and Representatives, and at present by ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... building, opened before the conclusion of the labours of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, 1815-16, the windows of the patients' bedrooms were not glazed, nor were the latter warmed; the basement gallery was miserably damp and cold; there was no provision for lighting the galleries by night, and their windows were so high from the ground that the patients could not possibly see out, while the airing-courts were cheerless and much too small. Such was the description given by a keen observer, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... with the new electric line. Between ourselves, Armstrong, this system is going to be a big thing when it's complete. This is a straight tip. I happen to be in a position to know. I also happen to be in position to put you very near the basement, providing you wish to come in with us unhampered." The voice halted meaningly. "That's all I'm at liberty to say now, until you are really in and prove unmistakably—I'll have several things more to tell ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... had known during her residence in New York had been spent in the room where she now sat; a basement room with low ceiling, and faded olive-tinted walls. The furniture was limited to an old-fashioned square table of mahogany, rich with that colour which comes only from the mellowing touch of age, and polished until it reflected the goblet of white and crimson phlox, which Regina had ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... runs an immense gallery where the crowd can promenade on days of public rejoicing; on the east side of the square rises the cathedral, with its steeples and light balustrades, proudly adorning its two towers; the basement story of the edifice being ten feet high, and containing warehouses full of the ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... Chiny is known in Southern Indya befure sunset. And so it passed through th' undherwurruld that th' color line was not to be dhrawn anny more, an' Hogan says that almost anny time he ixpicts to see a black face peerin' through a window an' in a few years I'll be takin' in laundhry in a basement instead iv occypyin' me present impeeryal position, an' ye'll be settin' in front iv ye'er cabin home playin' on a banjo an' watchin' ye'er little pickahinnissies rollickin' on th' ground an' wondhrn' whin th' ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... with titled beings, as thick as blackberries, and, better still, men and women who had earned noble names for themselves with pencil, pen, or chisel. They paid visits in palaces where the horses lived in the basement, rich foreigners on the first floor, artists next, ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... Washington used sometimes to attend service,—a pre-Revolutionary edifice, with ivy growing over its walls, though not very luxuriantly. Reaching the open country, we saw forts and camps on all sides; some of the tents being placed immediately on the ground, while others were raised over a basement of logs, laid lengthwise, like those of a log-hut, or driven vertically into the soil in a circle,—thus forming a solid wall, the chinks closed up with Virginia mud, and above it the pyramidal shelter of ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... go or come, No face looked forth from shut or open casement, No chimney smoked, there was no sign of home From parapet to basement—Hood ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... out of our way. We are the Great Amalgamated Crunch Company. Into our maw goes respect for tradition, reverence for the dead, decency, love of religion, sentiment, and beauty. These are back numbers. In their place, we give you something real and up-to-date from basement to flagstaff, with fifty applicants on the waiting list. If you don't believe it read ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... camouflage of automobiles had arrived ostentatiously at the main entrance, to carry and escort the illustrious couple in fitting pomp to the great station. From the landing the couple were dropped direct to the basement to a prearranged oubliette. The password was the sound of the wheels of an ordinary cab at the kitchen entrance. The moments of suspense were not long. At the sound of the crush on the gravel a silent door was opened, two completely muffled figures crept out, and ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Ivanovitch. An old man dressed only in his shirt, who was wandering about the centre of the yard, said that they were in No. 30. The young man decided that this was the most probable report, and conducted me to No. 30 through the basement entrance, and darkness and bad smells, different from that which existed outside. We went down-stairs, and proceeded along the earthen floor of a dark corridor. As we were passing along the corridor, a door flew open abruptly, ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... at each other oddly. "Try the basement door," said Anne to the man. They stood at the top of the steps while the footman tried the iron gate that barred the way to the tradesmen's door. ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... had a stitch in my side. When I was housekeeper at the Nursery, I also had to attend to the furnace, and, strange but true, the furnace was built across the large basement from where the coal was thrown in, so I had to tote the coal over, and my modus operandi was to fill a tub with coal and then drag it across to the hungry furnace. Well, one day I felt the catch and got no better fast. After Dr. F—— punched and prodded, she said, "Why, you have the ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... in order not to attract the attention of the alert porter who lived in the basement, I crept up the carpeted stairs to the door of the flat, ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... girl was about to leave the room to go about her duties, she remarked that dinner would be served at six o'clock, and that Mona was to come down to the basement to eat with the ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the dark entrance to a basement restaurant. There was a sign which read "No mystery about our hash"! and there were other age- stained and world-battered legends which told him that the place was within his means. He stopped before it and spoke to the assassin. "I guess I'll git ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... his sisters all away. Anne in her situation as governess. Emily and Charlotte in Rue d'Isabelle. No one, therefore, to be a check upon his habits, save the neat old lady, growing weaker day by day, who spent nearly all her time in her bedroom to avoid the paven floors of the basement; and the father, who did not care for company, took his meals alone for fear of indigestion, and found it necessary to spend the succeeding time in perfect quiet. The greater part of the day was, therefore, at Branwell's uncontrolled, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... in its hole, and because spring will find a way, even down in the bargain basement of the Titanic Store, which is far below the level of the mole, Sadie Barnet, who had never seen a wood anemone and never sniffed of thaw or the wet wild smell of violets, felt the blood rise in her veins like sap, and across the aisle behind the white-goods counter Max Meltzer writhed ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... basement door?" queried Bessie, with a smile, for it pleased her to hear that the jewel ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... Norfolk, Beaudesert and Wimbledon-house, built by sir Thomas Cecil in 1588, remarkable for a great ascent of steps and terraces disposed in a manner resembling some Italian villas. In others the offices are detached in separate masses, or concealed, or placed in a basement story; and only the body of the house remains, either as a solid mass or enclosing small courts: this disposition does not differ from the most modern arrangements. Of these houses Longleat in Wiltshire and Wollaton near ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Jenks took his half-hourly "nip" with laudable punctuality, thereafter rising eloquent to call Mr. President's attention to that little bill; and all the while that huge engine, the lobby, steadily pumped away in the political basement, sending streams of hot corruption into every ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... day ends gradually, reluctantly, as it were. At about five there is a sort of stir, not unlike the stir in a theatre when the curtain is on the point of falling. Ledgers are closed with a bang. Men stand about and talk for a moment or two before going to the basement for their hats and coats. Then, at irregular intervals, forms pass down the central aisle and out through the swing doors. There is an air of relaxation over the place, though some departments are still working as hard as ever under a blaze ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... him by chaining him fast to that perch for a week; and as a rule he seems to amend his ways for a long time. But the last occasion failed most miserably, I must confess. Do you think you are strong enough to carry the step-ladder up from the basement, Fred?" ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... grandeur of the Old Dominion. Through the clouds of dust and the noise and confusion of the village upon the hill rising immediately above the river, we rode, noting the signs of the recent contest, or looking down on the blue Potomac, flowing peacefully below. One large brick house had a breach in the basement story large enough for us to ride in, caused by some bursting shell. Dead horses still lay in the road; the tailpiece of a broken cannon was yet there. As we emerged out of the dust at the top of the hill beyond, toward the afternoon sun, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is it not?" he said; "yet by means of this simple device the Gables has been emptied of occupant after occupant. There was small chance of the trick being detected, for, as I have said, there was absolutely no aperture from roof to basement by means of which one of them could have escaped into ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... looked to see the roof covering the house, and instead-like the eggs in a Chinese juggler's fingers, that are turned in a jiffy into a growing plant—behold the roof miraculously transformed into a garden, or lost in a rampart, or, with quite shameless effrontery, playing deserter, and serving as the basement of another and still fairer dwelling. That was a sample of the way all things played you the trick of surprise on this hill. Stairways began on the cobbles of the streets, only to lose themselves in a side wall; a turn on the ramparts would land ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... to the back door of the long hall and looked out, but not a soul could she see. This was discouraging, but she was not a girl who would willingly turn back, after having set out on an errand of mercy. There was a door which seemed to lead to the basement, and on this she ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... all the natural—as opposed to supernatural—miseries incidental to our state. Dispiriting reports ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, and descended from the upper rooms. There was no rolling-pin, there was no salamander (which failed to surprise me, for I don't know what it is), there was nothing in the house, what there was, was broken, the ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... this all meant to my Carl—until recently reading and pegging away unencouraged in his basement study up on the ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... fastidious taste. I trust the coffee is right this morning, and the tea, and the toast, and the steak, and the servants, and the front-hall mat, and the upper-story hall-door, and the basement premises; and now I suppose I am to be trained in respect to my general education. I shall set about the tails of my gs at once, but trust you will prepare a list of any other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... he found Temistocle asleep in the tower basement, saw the key in the lock, guessed whence the noise had come, and turned it. The movement woke Temistocle, who started to his feet, and recognised the tall figure of the baron just entering the door. Too much confused for reflection, he called aloud, and the baron disappeared ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... one, a small, quaint, dusty rookery, down in a basement, entered almost directly from the street. It bore over the door a little gilt sign which read ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the trail of Mrs. Paine's boarding-house might be over it all. He had known boarding-houses as a boy, before his father made his money. There had been basement dining-rooms, catsup bottles, and people passing ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... of sexual desire. It is of the style usual in northern India, an unlighted shrine surmounted by a dome, and approached by a rather ample vestibule, which is also imperfectly lighted. An inscription has been preserved recording the restoration of the temple about 1550 but only the present basement dates from that time, most of the super-structure being recent. Europeans may not enter but an image of the goddess can be seen from a side door. In the depths of the shrine is said to be a cleft in the rock, ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... grow wiser and wiser) Midas had got to be so exceedingly unreasonable that he could scarcely bear to see or touch any object that was not gold. He made it his custom, therefore, to pass a large portion of every day in a dark and dreary apartment underground, at the basement of his palace. It was here that he kept his wealth. To this dismal hole- -for it was little better than a dungeon—Midas betook himself whenever he wanted to be particularly happy. Here, after carefully locking the door, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... winding staircase that leads to the composing room, and then to the basement where the presses are located, the chief runs. He sets about his work with a calmness and speed that is remarkable. The first page is put on the composing table and the form opened. The head lines are removed and the copy that the editor is turning out a dozen words at a time on a page, are instantly ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... had been brought from Quebec, and no one was permitted to see their work nor to learn what they were doing. Their work was to be in the basement, which had been excavated ten feet deep, the massive walls reaching down until they rested upon solid rock. The building was seventy-five feet square. A furnace occupied the center of the basement. Next, in front, was a beautiful office, finished in hardwood, exquisitely polished, ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... looked round. The restaurant was in an underground basement; it was damp and dark, and reeked with the stifling fumes of vodka, tobacco-smoke, tar, and some acrid odor. Facing Gavrilo at another table sat a drunken man in the dress of a sailor, with a red beard, all over coal-dust and tar. Hiccupping every minute, he was droning a ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... connected with twenty different churches of several denominations, and while all had reference to the spiritual as well as physical welfare of the soldier, yet there was nothing sectarian or denominational in its work. From the fact that its meetings were held and its goods packed in the basement and vestry of Dr. Boardman's Church, it was sometimes called the Presbyterian Ladies' Aid Society, but the name, if intended to imply that its character was denominational, was unjust. As early as October, 1861, the pastors of twelve churches in Philadelphia united ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... sort of style, guarding the entrance to the churchyard, rose an immense pile of buildings, cumbrous and uncouth. These were built something in the fashion of an inverted pyramid; to wit, the smaller area occupying the basement, and the larger spreading out into the topmost story. As she turned the corner of this vast hive of habitation—for many families were located therein—a gay cavalier, sumptuously attired, swept round at the same moment. Man and maid stood still for one instant. With unpropitious courtesy, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... content because I could see that he was now ready to put his theories, whatever they were, to the final test. He spent the rest of the day working at the hospital with Dr. Barron, adjusting a very delicate piece of apparatus down in a special room, in the basement. I saw it, but I had no idea what it was or what its use ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... his left round the front of the house, he passed the gun-room door, and went down a short path, which led to the level of the servants' quarters. These were built on the slope of the hill, so that what was a basement in the front of the house was level with the ground at ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... In the basement was the grill. It was a night when one might order something heavy and hot. A planked steak—with deviled oysters at the start and a salad ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... down and whistling, took his private elevator to the garages in the second level of the hotel's basement floors. He selected a limousine and dialed the Interplanetary ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... enter the judges' chamber as usual, but was informed that the sentence would be read in the great hall of judicature. They descended accordingly to the basement story, and passed down the narrow flight of steps which then as now connected the more modern structure, where the Advocate had been imprisoned and tried, with what remained of the ancient palace of the Counts of Holland. In the centre of the vast hall—once the banqueting chamber of those petty ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... workroom for unemployed women during the financial stress of 1908 provided them with regular work and pay. It was advisable also to serve nourishing lunches daily to these underfed workers. There was already a simple lunchroom in the basement of the school, containing such bare necessities as plain tables on horses, long wooden benches, a gas stove with four burners, a few cooking utensils, and a closet filled with inexpensive china. The complete cost ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... who had come to the house an orphan child, was busy carving red and white roses out of a little pile of turnips and delicately shaped blood-beets, intended to ornament divers plates of cold turkey and chicken salad. This pretty fancy work was carried on in the front basement or housekeeper's room, while a bustle of preparation gave promise of great things from the kitchen. Clorinda, the moving spirit of all this commotion, rushed from basement to kitchen, and then to pantry and store-room, ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... said, "is a drawing of the Gatun dam, and this other is a crude sketch of the basement of the Daily ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... a curious life I led at this time between my regular occupation, lobelia, the dissecting room of the professor and frequent religious exhortations. I was immensely delighted by the secrets of the basement cellar, where, in winter, the cadavers were kept I became accustomed to the sight of them, and frequently inspected them when alone, curious to see the internal structure of a human body, for until that time I was not conscious of any internal structure of the human body. Hands and feet were ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... seemed to comprise everything needed for the production of the most entrancing and majestic architectural views, and as Edwin took out its upper case and discovered still further marvellous devices and apparatus in its basement beneath, he dimly but passionately saw, in his heart, bright masterpieces that ought to be the fruit of that box. There was a key to it. He must have it. He would have given all that he possessed ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... I never passed so sad an hour, Dear friend, as that one at the church to-night. The edifice from basement to the tower Was one resplendent blaze of coloured light. Up through broad aisles the stylish crowd was thronging, Each richly robed like some king's bidden guest. "Here will I bring my sorrow and my longing," I said, ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... with only a little black kitten, "Snoop," to keep him from being scared to death; that was told of in the first book, for Freddie went shopping one day with his mamma, and wandered off a little bit. Presently he found himself in the basement of the store; there he had so much trouble in getting out he fell asleep in the meantime. Then, when he awoke and it was all dark, and the great big janitor came to rescue him—oh!—Freddie thought the man might even be ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... distance, but that could not take the terror out of it, and it was the most dreadful sound to me that I had ever heard. It went all about, everywhere, down there: along the halls, through all the rooms, in both stories, and in the basement and the cellar; then outside, and further and further away—then back, and all about the house again, and I thought it would never, never stop. But at last it did, hours and hours after the vague twilight of the garret had long ago been ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... the prisoners. The turnkey, the same who on Aramis' first arrival had shown himself so inquisitive and curious, had now become not only silent, but even impassible. He held his head down, and seemed afraid to keep his ears open. In this wise they reached the basement of the Bertaudiere, the two first stories of which were mounted silently and somewhat slowly; for Baisemeaux, though far from disobeying, was far from exhibiting any eagerness to obey. On arriving at the door, Baisemeaux ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... closed by green venetian blinds. I could see that there were lights in most of the rooms, while over the fan-light of the front door was a small transparent square of glass, bearing what seemed to be the representation of some Greek saint. The front steps were well kept, and in the deep basement was a well-lighted kitchen. ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... disaster was the inevitable consequence of the thaw. Both the schooner and the tartan were entirely destroyed. The basement of the icy pedestal on which the ships had been upheaved was gradually undermined, like the icebergs of the Arctic Ocean, by warm currents of water, and on the night of the 12th the huge block collapsed en masse, so that on the following morning nothing remained ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... sister, but it was really Bea who took charge of him during all that radiant June morning while Gertrude, as chairman of the Daisy Chain committee, was busy with her score of workers among the tubs of long-stemmed daisies in a cool basement room. Bea had immediately enrolled the young man as her first assistant in the arduous task of gathering armfuls of the starry flowers in ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... and, with the Apache chief's revolver prodding him in the back, left the room. At a command he went down the stairs to the basement. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... old Abbey stood darkly against the sky, with not a glimmer of light shining through its many windows; whilst behind it the Houses of Parliament, now in full session, glittered from roof to basement with innumerable lamps. All about them there was the rush and rattle of busy life, but the Abbey seemed inclosed in a magic circle of solitude and stillness. Overhead a countless host of little silvery clouds covered the sky, with fine threads and interspaces of dark blue lying between them. ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... same to you!" arose in response from basement and galleries, and the congregation passed out into a morning so soft, and light, and mild, that it seemed as if the seasons were out of joint, and that the New Year had been ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... two daughters were very busy in their toy shop that day. A load of packing boxes arrived, direct from the North Pole workshop of Santa Claus, and these boxes were stored down in the basement. ...
— The Story of a China Cat • Laura Lee Hope
... base properly oriented, and being about to erect the building itself, the architects would certainly not have closed the mouth of the slant tunnel pointing northwards, but would have carried the passage onwards through the basement layers of the edifice, until these had reached the height corresponding to the place where the prolongation of the passage would meet the slanting north face of the building. I incline to think that at this place they would not be content to allow the north face to remain in steps, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... interesting subject, but the mere chronicler can only accept facts, not inquire into causes. Mr. Norbury always did give the Earl a send-off towards Dreamland, and saw the house deserted, before he vanished to a secret den in the basement. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Mazey, not by the scanty directions given her, but by the sound of the veteran's cracked and quavering voice, singing in some distant seclusion a verse of the immortal sea-song—"Tom Bowling." Just as she stopped among the rambling stone passages on the basement story of the house, uncertain which way to turn next, she heard the tuneless old voice in the distance, singing ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... she can leave. Bobby's getting fretful, anyway, and she can take him under the trees and watch the bees and amuse him. Betty!" Mary Ballard went to the short flight of steps leading to the paved basement, dark and cool: "Betty, father wants you to watch the bees, dear. Find Bobby. He's so still I'm afraid he's out at the currant bushes again, and he'll make himself sick. Keep an eye on the hive under the Tolman Sweet ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... survival and temporary form. Thus, Victor Hugo sees in each letter of the alphabet the pictured imitation of one of the objects essential to human knowledge: "A is the head, the gable, the cross-beam, the arch, arx; D is the back, dos; E is the basement, the console, etc., so that man's house and its architecture, man's body and its structure, and then justice, music, the church, war, harvesting, geometry, mountains, etc.—all that is comprised in the alphabet through the mystic virtue of form."[104] Even more radical is Gerard ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... down the broad stair to the school entrance and along the basement, where the bulk of the class-rooms was situated, there was only a faint hum to be heard from behind the numerous doors—until the red-waistcoated porter came out of his lodge and rang the big bell which told that the day's ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... officer downstairs into a basement, where on either side of a white-walled, brilliantly lighted, specklessly clean corridor, there were numbers of cells, very clean, and smelling of fresh whitewash. Each had a broad low shelf in it, and a bench opposite, a little wider than a man's body. Lemuel suddenly felt himself ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... resist, some of them, abusing the German wounded through the windows of the hospital. But then, with a keen dramatic instinct, Soeur Julie drew a striking picture of the contrast between the behaviour of the French officer going down to the basement to visit the wounded German officers there, and that of the German officers on a similar errand. She conveyed with perfect success the cold civility of the Frenchman, beginning with a few scathing words about the treatment of the town, and then proceeding to an investigation of the personal ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... what it was. I suppose you will say I am inventing it when I tell you that it used to sit round a table, in the basement of an Italian restaurant, devising schemes for getting rid of people (especially people like Charles) en bloc; that it didn't provide the Italian restaurant- keeper with as much money as he thought he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... houses, with frames of oak and of chestnut, Such as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the Henries. Thatched were the roofs, with dormer windows, and gables projecting Over the basement below ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... city child often lives in a crowded basement, with many brothers and sisters. The child of poor parents in the cities is not usually very clean; but then he has very few opportunities for bathing, and his only playground is the courtyard and ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... will. They're frightfully poor and it would just match their furniture, I'm sure. Henceforth Aunt Minerva shall shed her light in the basement. ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... a locality, you understand, it is a point of view. It reaches out imperiously and fastens on what it will. The Brevoort basement—after ten o'clock at night—is the Village. So is the Lafayette on occasion. During the day they are delightful French hostelries catering to all the world who like heavenly things to eat and the right atmosphere in which to eat them. But as the ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... sounds grew on my nerves to such an extent that, were it only to punish my cowardice, I felt I must make the 'round of the basement again, and, if anything were there, face it. And then, I would go up to my study, for I knew sleep was out of the question, with the house surrounded by creatures, half beasts, half something else, and ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... in the hallway, where he remained throughout the performance—a gloomy, watchful figure. Lorelei came down boldly, dressed for the street, and, since she could not pass the besieger, excused herself briefly. Descending the basement stairs, she crossed under the stage, made her way into the orchestra-pit, and managed to leave the ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Raphael and Duerer and Lucas van Leyden, the cabinet decorated by Stothard, the chimney-piece carved by Flaxman; the miniatures and bronzes and Etruscan vases,—all the "infinite riches in a little room," which crowded No. 22 from garret to basement. These were the rarities that filled the columns of the papers and the voices of the quidnuncs when in 1856 they came to the hammer. But although the Press of that day takes careful count of these things, it makes ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... window opening into the basement room of the mill. The young hussar disengaged himself from the saddle and flew through it as the clown goes through the hoops at Franconi's. An instant later he had opened the door for us, with the blood streaming from ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... house in Grosvenor Gardens was wondering discontentedly what she was going to do with herself until tea-time, when she heard the sound of a bell ringing far down in the basement. Despite the grand drawing-room, despite the rich rustle of her grey silk dress, this great lady peeped from behind the curtain, and ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... home from school are all playing the fool With the house and its fittings from garret to basement. The girls, too, are back, and continual clack Goes on all day long, to home comfort's effacement. The pudding's as sticky, the holly as pricky, The smell of sour oranges awful as ever; Stuffed hamper-unpackers, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... far, we've just been talking defense. We need to take the offensive, ourselves." He glanced around. "Is there a freight elevator from this block to the basement?" ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... 3. Nothing had been done or thought of for two weeks in Springfield but the preparations for this day, and they had been made with a thoroughness which surprised the visitors from the East. The body lay in state in the Capitol, which was richly draped from roof to basement in black velvet and silver fringe. Within it was a bower of bloom and fragrance. For twenty-four hours an unbroken stream of people passed through, bidding their friend and neighbor welcome home and farewell; and at ten o'clock on May 4, the coffin lid was closed, and a vast procession ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... expectations, the building, even now that he was inside it, remained dark and silent as the grave; but this was explained by the statement of Xaxaguana that the revolting priests were all gathered together in the rock-hewn basement of the building, where they were at that moment engaged in putting their more faithful brethren to the dreadful "ordeal by fire". Accordingly, when Xaxaguana unlocked a massive bronze gate let into a wall, and invited Harry to descend with him to the chamber where the horrid rite was in ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... quenched, and all the house was quiet, I heard a low and wily whistle from a clump of trees close by; and then three figures passed between me and a whitewashed wall, and came to a window which opened into a part of the servants' basement. This window was carefully raised by some one inside the house; and after a little whispering, and something which sounded like a kiss, all the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... itself in public places and proceeded uncontrolled. Thus during the Civil War, when the volume of speculation had completely outgrown the limited machinery of the old Board of Brokers, a continuous market developed partly in the street and partly in a basement room called the "Coal Hole" and flourished during the day, while in the evening it was continued in the lobby of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. This market did more business than was done upon the Exchange itself, and a few years after the War, many of its members, who had organized into ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... said Clayton, with inimitable assurance. "But it IS so, I can assure you nevertheless. I don't believe he got once a nail's breadth off the Bible truth. He told me how he had been killed—he went down into a London basement with a candle to look for a leakage of gas—and described himself as a senior English master in a London private school when ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... was off to the basement like one of Infant's own fallow-deer. The stables gave me what I wanted, and coming back with it through a dark passage, I ran squarely into Ipps. 'Go on!' he grunted. 'The minute he lays hands on Master Bobby, Master ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... home to find some poor waif lying in wait for him. Man, woman or child who had wandered in, maybe, before the big door downstairs was closed, or who, if still blessed with some outer semblance of gentility, had managed cunningly to get past the Cerberus who lived in the basement, and whose duty it was to open the front door, after eight ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... occupied by the class in analytical chemistry. When completed, the building will be a beautiful and a convenient structure. The walls will be of pressed brick laid in red mortar, with dark granite base, and Nova Scotia sandstone trimmings. The roof will be covered with Monson slate. The basement will be eleven feet high, mostly above ground, and will serve for the force-pump, heating apparatus, and ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... did startle her,' grandmamma replied, 'but fortunately she thought it was something in the basement. I must go back to her at once,' and without another word to me ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... the curbstone and met the shock of the collision so vigorously that those who would have sent him headlong into the street were sent backward themselves, and came very near going head first down the stairs that led into a basement restaurant. ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... Rose and the baby kissed her, and Myrna came downstairs to kiss her, and Edwin was called up from the basement to kiss her. It seemed the easiest and most natural thing in the world for everybody to kiss her but Quin, who would have given all he had ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... in the street. We had heard a girl's scream: then her frantic, muffled words to attract our attention. Then we saw her white face at the basement window. It was on the night of June 8-9, 1950, when I was walking with my friend Larry Gregory through Patton Place in New York City. My name is George Rankin. In a small, deserted house we found the strange girl; ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... Philip, whose acquaintance he had made at the common table in the basement, who appeared to be free of the world of letters and art. He was an alert, compact, neatly dressed little fellow, who had apparently improved every one of his twenty-eight years in the study of life, in gaining assurance and confidence in himself, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and swells over the great four-poster. Passengers in the mail-coaches running into London in the eighteenth century looked through leafless branches and saw it flaring beneath them. The light burns behind yellow blinds and pink blinds, and above fanlights, and down in basement windows. The street market in Soho is fierce with light. Raw meat, china mugs, and silk stockings blaze in it. Raw voices wrap themselves round the flaring gas-jets. Arms akimbo, they stand on the pavement bawling—Messrs. Kettle and Wilkinson; their ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf |
